


Seeing Red and Reason

by soltian



Category: Prince of Tennis (TV), Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Violence, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:31:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2430617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soltian/pseuds/soltian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life as a band of medieval mercenaries is tough, even when you're the internationally feared Rikkaidai. When Lord Sakaki offers the troupe an alternative to starvation for a particular fee, Yukimura accepts...but one of his subordinates is less than thrilled with the arrangement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Red and Reason

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sumiya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sumiya/gifts).



It was dismal in the cramped, steamy tavern. Dismal with laughter, light, and song. Dismal with the happy voices of customers eating, drinking, and flirting. A company of eight men surrounded the table in the corner, rumpled and stained everywhere but a bright yellow kerchief tied to each of their upper left arms, and each a different kind of dismal in the overly-cheery pub.

“We need money,” Renji said as he passed around tankards of water before taking his seat at Yukimura’s left.

“We need food,” Bunta complained, still chewing on the stem of a mushroom he had picked earlier that day, despite first Niou and then Renji warning him that it could be poisonous.

“We need jobs,” growled Kirihara, ignoring his water with both fists on the table, since clenching them was the only thing keeping his fingers from twitching. “Battles are everywhere and somehow we’re starving. How can it have been two months since our last bounty?”

“There is other work,” Yagyuu countered, a gazette spread out over his portion of their crowded table, marked in several places by his quill. “We could simply expand our interests.”

Kirihara scrunched up his face and gagged. “To what, the coal market? Smashing boulders? We’re not common thugs, Yagyuu, we’re Rikkaidai. We have a reputation.”

Yagyuu stiffened, but before he could rebutt, Yukimura cut in softly.

“Akaya’s right, Yagyuu. Mercenary work is for common mercenaries. We are nothing less than the herald of war.”

There was a silence, mildly punctuated by Kirihara’s smug huffs of breath. Bunta’s stomach growled. 

“The herald of war is destitute, Seiichi.” Renji pronounced while keeping his eyes focused on the far wall. Yukimura turned to him coldly, but it was his luck that a messenger chose exactly that moment to appear. He was struggling through the larger frames crowding him, flustered and unfortunate looking, graced with a unibrow and a scratchy voice that broke with fear as he approached the once quite legendary leader of Rikkaidai.

“A...Am I addressing Yukimura Seiichi!” he shouted, unreasonably loudly, before quickly adding, “Please don’t hurt me!”

Yukimura allowed his expression to slide from frigid to neutral, and crooked one finger towards the envelope in the terrified boy’s hand. He scuttled forward and dropped it into Yukimura’s palm, and was gone almost as quickly, leaving the eight members of Rikkai to lean in towards its contents. Much to their annoyance, Yukimura kept the letter close to his chest and read it silently, only allowing Sanada and Renji view of the crisp, beautifully embellished parchment. He glanced at Sanada, who nodded silently, and folded the letter into his breast pocket. 

“Yes,” Renji added, his manner calm other than an annoyed knit to his brow, “That does seem worth investigating.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Yukimura responded lightly as he got to his feet. The members of his troupe stood at once, muscle memory from years of training - when the captain moves, so does the rest of his body. “Men, are we up for a bit of night walking?”

\---

Midnight found Kirihara Akaya warm, fed, comfortable, and sleepless. Rikkaidai had made the trek from the heart of Hyotei’s capital to an isolated manor in her countryside - a summer home, they were informed by the bland, serene servants that served them dinner and drew their baths, of the Duke Sakaki. He’d heard the man’s name before - seen it looped elegantly at the bottom of a few wanted posters, or attached neatly to the boxes of coin they received for severed heads - but he couldn’t put a face to it. Even this evening, as they ate his food (with gusto, all too aware that this night of hospitality might be the only one of its kind) he hadn’t shown his face, sending his regrets to Yukimura in a little white card. Yukimura returned the card to the servant that had brought it to him, and, Kirihara noticed between bites of steak and spiced yams, he had not let even Sanada or Renji read it.

And now he was lying on a feather mattress, moonlight filtering into a room he had all to himself, nothing but the soft sound of the June breeze and owls hooting to disturb his sleep.

And sleep would not come.

It was just all wrong. He had wanted a good hard _fight_ \- blood under his fingernails, tendons between his teeth. He wanted a sack of gold that smelled of grease and to end up in a pile with his brothers at an inn somewhere, having drunken themselves silly until they were regaling each other with stories and secrets, a messily congealed mass of bodies becoming one person. He wanted it so badly it made his chest ache. He was stiff as iron and couldn’t even feel the pillows clouding around him, could barely see the ornately carved and filigreed ceiling he was glaring at.

His rush of thought was interrupted by a tiny creak in the wooden floor, and he sat up, a quiet gasp in his throat, to look for its source. There was another creak, quieter, and Kirihara rushed to his bedroom door to peek out into the hallway. A candle’s flickering light was traveling down the hall away from him, and as it turned, Yukimura’s face became faintly visible at the top of the stairs. Kirihara’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to call to him, but Yukimura spotted him first, and smiled with a shake of his head. He held a finger to his lips, and waved once for Kirihara to return to his room. Then he stepped soundlessly down the stairs, and was gone.

Kirihara spent the next three sleepless hours pacing a circle in his room, raging and reeling in the impulse to smash the ornaments and furniture he had been provided with. He couldn’t put many words to his troubled thoughts, couldn’t explain to himself, alone in the dark, _why_ it troubled him so, but it wasn’t right - not right, not right, not _right_. It was early dawn before he was finally asleep, curled up on the bare floor beneath his window. He had shredded his pillows into goose down, blanketing the pretty little room like snow.

\---

What Kirihara had thought would be an overnight stay became several days, then more than a week. Bunta took no time at all filling out, Jackal recovered from his hacking cough, Sanada spent fourteen hours each day in the peach orchard with his swords, free to train and meditate uninterrupted. Niou and Yagyuu delighted in the tricks and trinkets of the house; it was riddled with precious gems and secret passages, and it would have been difficult to determine which the pair found more interesting. Renji had appointments with what seemed like half the bankers in Hyotei, taking meetings both in one of Sakaki’s quiet parlors as well as in Atobe City twice or three times each day.

Yukimura seemed to be doing absolutely nothing, other than to care for Duke’s flowers and smile. Kirihara, as the days passed, began to do little other than watch him, and rage.

After all, it wasn’t as if he were doing something as distracting as sleep.

Dinner on the tenth night of their stay started out quietly. Seven of the company were seated around a meal of pork dumplings and the garden’s freshest vegetables. It would have been a perfectly pleasant evening, if Kirihara hadn’t chosen to drag himself into the dining room and ruin it.

While the rest of Rikkaidai were regularly taking advantage of Lord Sakaki’s luxurious bathing facilities and seemingly endless supply of fresh clothing, Kirihara had begun to pointedly turn these things down. He sat himself at the table glaring at his troupe with bleary eyes, half-wrapped in a torn sheet from his bed and little else. When he reached out to help himself to the food, he was interrupted by Yukimura’s quiet refusal.

“You are not welcome to eat with us in this state, Akaya. You’re a disgrace.”

The dining hall went silent. Kirihara locked his haggard, bloodshot green eyes with Yukimura’s icy blue ones, and _growled_. 

“Disgrace? I’m the disgrace. Rikkaidai has a legacy - heroes, champions, _brilliance_. Not some faceless creep’s _kept pets_.”

“Akaya.”

“You’re _disgusting_. Less than a _fortnight_ ago you had grand words about _war_ and _glory_ and now _every night_ -”

“Akaya. Return to your room.” Sanada had interrupted Kirihara and was standing, by all appearances calm, across the table from him - but his eyes were burning, and his fist trembled over the lacquered knife he had drawn from his belt. Kirihara stared at him - his face for a moment dropping to a pale expression of wounded innocence. Sanada, the Emperor of the battlefield, the man he had dragged himself across half a continent to even catch a glimpse of. Sanada who had defeated him effortlessly with a simple wave of his swords, who fought by his side like a monster, every bit as demonic and berserk as his own soul. And here he stood, shivering, defending a pack of ragged freeloaders and a whore.

He didn’t mean to start laughing. He just couldn’t help himself. The sound reverberated disturbingly in the gorgeously sun-lit hall, an inhuman cackle of anything but mirth. Bunta, Jackal, Yagyuu, and even Niou winced, putting one or two hands to their ears to block out the sound. Yukimura and Renji sat still as statues, and Sanada put the point of his knife to Kirihara’s throat in one smooth motion, cutting his insane cackling to a sudden halt.

“I see I was unclear. Return to your room, Akaya, or I will relieve you of your windpipe.”

Kirihara’s laughter stilled, his eyes finding the knife, then Sanada’s face. He tugged his chin free from the prick the blade, gathered up his ragged sheet, and slunk from the room without another word. After several minutes had passed, Renji folded his napkin neatly near his plate, and was about to get to his feet when Yukimura put a hand on his wrist, and shook his head.

“Not this time, Renji. Right now he needs his captain.”

\---

For the past ten days, there had been a certain amount of restraint and decency that was keeping Kirihara from making wreckage of everything he could reach. No more. There had been sweet little ceramic elephants in his room, a gold clock with a glass dome covering it, a bookshelf laden with richly leather-bound tomes.

 _I’m a berserker_ , he thought as he splintered one of the shelves in his bare hands, _A force of nature. A super-human demon they should be grateful to lick the fucking boots of. And they’re weak! They’re guileless and rotten and weak. How could I have sworn myself to such base, lowlife_ **liars?**

The world was getting hot behind his eyes, blurred by frustrated tears. The tiny wound on his throat had leaked out three fat droplets of blood. He didn’t hear Yukimura enter his open door as he savaged one of the toppled books, but he did hear the door click shut, and whirled on Rikkaidai’s captain, dressed in a rich pervert’s borrowed robes and smelling like flowers. He was immaculate, perfectly unflustered. He gave Kirihara the same cool, superior stare he had first greeted him with, but there was no hint of amusement in his eyes, no fragment of warmth or movement. His stillness was unbearable. Kirihara met his eyes for only a few moments before he let out a beastly howl of pain, dropping to his knees among the splintered wood and clutching his forehead as if it would split apart.

His color began deepening - his normally pale skin filling up with crimson - his legs sprouted crimped fur as they distorted to a shape more goat-like than human, and his head split apart - the normally tiny horns easily hidden by his mop of tangled curls becoming hardened twists rooted from his temples, their sharp points matching the ones his ears had grown into. 

“Hypocrite,” Kirihara growled, his voice gravelly but still distinctly his own, Yukimura’s shape in front of him became a silhouette of cool blue light, with a heart beating calmly inside of it, waiting to be silenced. “ _Traitor!_ ”

He launched himself across the room with the intent to strike, but a flash of steel came up near his face along with a heavy kick to his midsection, the double blow knocking him to the floor, stunned, before he could even piece together why there was blood pouring from his forehead. After blinking the stuff out of his eyes, his vision returned to reality, revealing a knife in one of Yukimura’s hands and his own horn in the other. He screamed wordlessly, clutching the fresh wound with his gnarled claws, filled more with rage than pain.

His horn. _His_. How dare he hold a piece of his body as if it were nothing, how dare he just _stand there._ To his increasing shock, Yukimura calmly placed both the knife and his horn on the bureau before advancing towards him, completely, idiotically unarmed.

“I realize you’re less than human, Akaya, and I’ve made fair allowances because of it. But this behavior must end.” Kirihara snarled as he approached, and struck out at him as soon as he was in reach - slashing easily through the delicate silk of his robe, but just barely grazing his perfect skin. He found himself panting, sweating, his berserker form a burden to fight with - a burden _not_ to fight with - his oath of loyalty to Yukimura and his clan strung like a length of hangman’s rope between them, on the tense verge of snapping as a tiny sliver of red opened up on Yukimura’s abdomen. He looked down at it for only a moment, and then took action.

Before Kirihara had time to have another thought, Yukimura had laid his hands on him, gripping him tightly by his hair and his throat, pulling cruelly on his bleeding scalp and hauling him to his hooved feet with deceptive, nearly inhuman power. Kirihara gasped, scuffed the ground with his feet and fought to dislodge his captain’s grip, but Yukimura dragged him unhesitatingly through the mess he’d made to throw him onto his rejected bed, which had remained untouched since their first night in the house.

“We are guests in this house.” Yukimura’s voice was as calm as before. Kirihara choked and clawed at him wordlessly, the pain beginning to throb through his head making him enraged and dizzy in equally violent spurts, staining the pristine sheets with splatters of red. “It is your duty as my underling to respect the host that _I_ respect, and most of all - “ 

Kirihara’s shaking body had been mostly unclothed to start with, so Yukimura made quick, rough work of forcing his beast-like legs apart, hitting him soundly when he kicked, and holding down his heatedly bobbing throat with vice-like fingers. He worked in silence as he overcame Kirihara’s fits of wordless growls and spitting, and finally brought him to shuddering stillness by yanking roughly on a fistful of his hair, his palm grinding cruelly into what was now the smoothly cut stump where his horn should have been.

“It is your duty to respect _me_.”

“Ghh…” Kirihara’s eyes were still wild, his cheeks streaked as much with blood as with fat, angry tears, his blood-red hands tight in Yukimura’s back where they had clawed ten damp slashes right through his robe. “I won’t… _I won’t_ …”

“You will. You must.” Yukimura kept his grip calmly as his other hand slid almost methodically between their bodies, ignoring the simmering skin of Kirihara’s torso and cock to delve his fingers deep inside of him. Kirihara squawked his offense and made an attempt to squirm free of his grip, but Yukimura shook him roughly by the hair and whispered with calm totality into his ear.

“You swore fealty to me, little demon. You could rip me to shreds if it was your will. If it _pleased_ you - but that is not your desire. If you’re lucky, Akaya, I won't abandon you. If you're lucky, I’ll claim you right here. Beg for it.”

Kirihara was panting now, looking up at his captain with his face twisted in pain, anger, and a strangely childish wonder. He shook his head as much as Yukimura’s grip would allow, and Yukimura increased the pressure of his fingers, clawing his insides with careless roughness that forced Kirihara to buck and keen.

“Yukimura...Yukimura…”

“Beg, Akaya. You shame yourself with this resistance. You’ve disgraced your troupe and spoken my name with _spite_. If you want my forgiveness, or my love, plead for them.”

Kirihara’s grip on Yukimura’s bleeding back loosened - he was shivering, jolting from the continued attack of his fingers, his skin gleaming from the effort of maintaining his form, his prick hard and leaking despite the cruel treatment. Yukimura waited patiently, watching him continue to squirm, then bent to press a gentle kiss on his blood-soaked cheek. Kirihara whimpered in panic, then, and clung to Yukimura without his claws, hiccuping roughly as he attempted to speak over a sudden sob.

“Y-es. I want it. I want...stop hating me...I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_ , captain - “

Yukimura took him in with a calm smile, and when he was certain that his pleas would not change direction, he put a soothing finger to his lips.

“You are mine. Unquestioningly. Your flesh is mine to use and discard as I wish. If I ordered you to slit your own throat, you would smile for me. Nod if you understand.”

If Kirihara had been panting before, he was frantic now, choking on his own air as he attempted to twist his head to the side, to refuse the command, but in the end he relented, whimpering thinly as he nodded in a mixture of terror and relief, his fingers knotting in Yukimura’s hair, desperate to bring him closer now that he had given in.

“There there, little monster,” Yukimura sighed, as the iciness in his expression suddenly dropped, and he became all warm affection, soft eyes and hard hands as he bent to press their lips gently together. “I knew your heart was in the right place.”

\---

Several hours later, Kirihara was boy-shaped once more, drained of his crimson hue, and deeply asleep. Yukimura lay next to him, stroking his freshly dressed wound carefully, and felt a genuine serenity surround him for the first time since entering Sakaki’s grounds. He had been right about one thing, this demon. Sakaki was an indignity. Nearly an unbearable one, but not quite. A few days more would have his estate tied up in the proper knots, his troupe’s future secured for good, and the Duke’s name wiped out so thoroughly that history would not remember such a man had even been born.

There was a soft knock on the door, and Renji walked into the wreckage of the room. Yukimura watched him blankly survey the damage, then pick up the twisted red horn, sticky with congealed blood.

“Fascinating,” Renji said quietly, commenting on nothing else. “It’s warm, as if still alive.” 

“Do keep it safe, Renji,” Yukimura sighed, and allowed himself to rest, draping an arm over Kirihara as a protective parent cradles their child. “Its very precious to me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written originally for the Spring PoT exchange on LJ, for Sumiya <3 Edits and illustrations have been added since that exchange.


End file.
